The usual suspects were on hand, comprising a substantial proportion of the crowd. I saw members of the SEIU…

…ANSWER Coalition…

…The Party for Socialism and Liberation…

…Code Pink…

…and some guy who was a member of both a socialist group and Occupy Wall Street.

No really, we’re mainstream! “We Are the 99%!” etc., and so forth.

(Photo courtesy of Larry in SF.)
I say that there were about a hundred “protesters” there, but in fact about 75 of them, including me, “Larry in SF,” and the folks you see here, were photographers or reporters covering the event. Just about everybody had a camera.

A lame attempt to fashion a modern foreclosure-themed remake of “War is not healthy for children and other living things,” a famous anti-war poster from the ’60s. That’s Edvard Munch’s “Frown” as the illustration.

So, let me get this straight: Wells Fargo allows immigrants to live in big homes that they otherwise could not afford, by offering mortgage loans with no credit checks, and simultaneously imprisons immigrants in detention centers. Dastardly!

(As you can tell, I’m highly cynical about this entire narrative. The phrase “predatory lending” is the most Orwellian doubletalk euphemism of the last ten years. Here’s a rule of thumb for ya: Don’t buy things you can’t afford, and don’t take out loans you can’t pay back. Is that so hard to remember?)

(Photo courtesy of Larry in SF.)
We don’t tax the rich? At all?

In reality, of course, the rich pay the highest tax rate of any income group. And it is the poor, not the rich, who pay no income taxes. But hey, that wouldn’t make a snappy button, would it?

Not everybody was on-message. Some anti-Smart Meter conspiracy theorists tried to tie in their message to the protest’s overall theme by pointing out that Wells Fargo invests in PG&E. Naturally, these off-topic hangers-on had the biggest and most visible sign, muddying the thrust of the event.

Whatever happened to the Truthers? Why, they became the Occupiers. As I walked away, I encountered one of the protesters’ Priuses parked nearby, plastered with both “Occupy” and “9/11 Truth” stickers.

Let’s see, banks were required by a damndemocrat congress to make loans available to people that could not pay them back, and now that their property has been foreclosed the rabble occupy filth are upset. Did I miss anything?

Once the foreclosures started, the house of cards came down. Those countries within the global economy that held the paper were bailed out by Fed, a non government company, with American tax payers footing the bill. One of the biggest, if not the biggest crimes in American History.

Are we slouching towards the French Revolution, where the SEIU & Other protestors drag the bankers out into the streets and execute them? It sure seems like it because law enforcement lets these OWS protestors camp out in places where its illegal. All this stuff needs is a spark to set it off, because the resentments are already stirred up.

That’s the point. It’s the reason the resentments are allowed to fester and the protests to get out of hand. It’s why Barack and his pink, purple, and brown shirted stooges keep stirring things up, and why the public-unionized law enforcement personnel and the DOJ refuse to enforce the law and maintain order. Barack wants riots in the streets, all streets, with murder, mayhem, property destruction and anarchical mobs. He wants an excuse to assume emergency powers, suspend habeas corpus, invoke martial law, and become de jure dictator as he has maneuvered himself into being de facto dictator for three years. Once established thus, he will never step down, and our elected Presidency will be forever lost. I suspect his intentions thereafter are for an inherited monarchistic rule, but until it is a fait accompli, he garners support from such useful idiots as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel, the Lame Stream Media, etc., by pretending the top job will follow the patterns of any communist regime. This, of course, is the essence of treason. Hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think so.

Amen , you got it exactly on the nailhead ! Idi Obama would then be our Dictator and president for life and turn America into the Communist state he has always wanted . And all his witless OWS types would be in gulags awaiting exicution . If they could only realize and see just what they are serving !

You know I watch this “stuff” as a Canadian in Toronto and I think you are bang on.
This is exactly how I saw this president years ago and now this appears to 100% acurrate by following his actions and his crazy double speak where this guy never says anything really ….but says it so well according to my socialist/marxist friends.
I hope my American friends get it right this time and put pretty much anyone in his place but him.
Hey folks….did you know we have lots and lots of oil up here? haha

The difference between the population of the United States as it is now and that of the French Revolution is the citizens of this country hold privately about a hundred million guns. Billions of rounds of ammo. If the “silent majority” get real tired of the BS, we have the power to do something about it. A well regulation militia, being necessary for the security of a free State. Time to form militias?

Actually, that’s backward. They are the one’s who are backing themselves against a wall.
When they learn that they have antagonized and awakened “a sleeping giant” the likelihood is that they will be beyond redemption.

Look, big difference between the American people and those revolutions from the French thru the Russian. The difference is that we Americans have known real freedom. For the French it was the oligarchy under the King. For the Russians, the communists seemed better than the Czar.

It is, then, far harder to enslave us. To make free men into sheeple. Look at the resistance within the black community as manifested by gang culture and rap music. It is driving the feminists and leftwingers nuts. Or the reject of homosexuality by both blacks and Hispanics.

the worst that would happen would a civil war. And might destroy us more than the oligarchy of the left.

This dumb “movement” couldn’t have legs, wouldn’t have organization, without sources of cash like Soros, unions & over fed Marxist wackjobs like Van Jones getting that cash, working their well fed asses off to keep it going.

And they couldn’t do it without the fecklessness and often complicity of Blue city governments and unionized cops. That said, there are limits to how much you want to confront them, especially when you know they want the confrontation and have their lawyers and media lapdogs with them. Fortunately, they’ve so far been denied their “Kent State Moment,” but it wouldn’t surprise me if they astroturfed a confrontation between alleged “tea partiers” and OWSers that led to violence of even deaths this summer. What’s a few dead kids if it contributes to the Revolution? We just have to do everything we can to make sure our crazies, and we do have them, don’t do anything stupid and that everybody at any Republican, conservative, Tea Party event has a camera and a cellphone.

I believe that you are correct – those behind the White House sock puppet-in-chief need violence and chaos in order to consolidate their control of the populace. They’ll find a way to manufacture it, if it doesn’t occur on its own accord.

What these chumps and losers fail to understand is that capitalism and free markets didn’t fail – they were mugged, coldcocked and shoved down a flight of stairs. They want to do away with capitalism and free markets – just wait until they see what replaces it.

Those who want to ‘burn the old world to reveal the new one’ will get nothing but ashes and their own extinction.

All of these banks have platoons of attorneys. If they’re being called racists, why not countersue. What’s there to lose? Since these are rackets by these public interest groups that are obviously well financed, go after them for defamation. Go after their funding sources. If you think the banks are camera shy, let’s put ALL of the funders (including private citizens) under a spotlight. They would scurry like cockroaches if the lights were turned on. For these banks and corporations to just roll over invites MORE abuse and it’s not them that has to pay the bill. They had just better make damned sure their skirts are clean.
If the shareholders were to demand ethical business practices rather than high dividends this crap wouldn’t exist. And IF the bank officers did break the laws, do not cover their legal expenses. The minute they pull this crap naked (without legal cover) it’s over for them.

Corporate management types aren’t the most courageous people in the World on their good days. These groups are closely coordinated with the Administration and more importantly with the big money interests that control the Administration. If these banks or any other industry earns the ire of the Administration, the SEC, the IRS, and the whole federal alphabet soup will make that industry’s misery their mission. We now officially have a terroristic government; cross it and there really are guys with machine guns at your door and helicopters circling your house or business. Play with the Administration, they litigate and regulate your competitors out of business, refuse to play and the regulate and litigate you out of business. This is one lesson the communists learned really well from the Nazis. The Nazi word for it was whatever the German for coordination is.

I have been asking for a long time if anyone understands that banking is a highly government regulated industry?
The same people who want this guy ousted from his home, will ooohh and aahhhh over Brad and Angelina’s $20mil home with 100,000 square feet of living space (I exaggerated purposefully)! The celebs in this country make these bankers look middle class!!

Oh, Wells Fargo Occupy is blocking up the street
Just discontented as can be
Oh, Wells Fargo Occupy is blocking up the street
Demanding housing for free

There are bloated folks in purple union T-shirts
There are communists a-waving yellow signs
There are people who look like they’re dipped in flea dirt
And they all chant the same loud whine

Oh, Wells Fargo Occupy is all over the block
Claiming to represent the poor
Protesting lack of jobs
New taxes
Or the high price of gas
Or it could be
Yes, it could be
Yes, you’re right, it surely could be
Housing mortgage
Overrated housing mortgage
Foreclosure!

Oh, Wells Fargo Occupy is blocking up the street
I have guards posted at my door
Oh, Wells Fargo Occupy is blocking up the street
It’s something I can’t ignore

I expect litt’ring and a little vandalism
I expect TV cameras to be there
I’ll hear advocacy for collectivism
And—I’ll tell you—I just don’t care

Oh, Wells Fargo Occupy is a-chanting now
Just how jejune can they be?
What is the objective of their execration
But borrowing that’s proof of idiocy?

Yeah, I expect things to get officially “interesting” soon.
1.) We are in the winter lull; when it is too cold in much of the country for the #Occupy/Unions/Administration to go full on Moonbat. They are playing this game now of directly threatening the wealthy [mind you, I have no love for Stumpf, et.al.; I just want them prosecuted for any actual crimes committed by the legal system.] and it will have no immediate effect.
2.) #O/U/A are like any other Leftist revolutionary group, going to push it farther and farther since there is no feedback mechanism in the form of any legal, financial, or physical downside to their actions.
3.) Eventually, probably by Spring, there is going to be actual property damage or physical violence against the actual businessmen, their families, or staff by #O/U/A forces. There will be no legal consequences.
4.) There will be one of three reactions from the business community. Some will cave and surrender to #O/U/A and place themselves at the total disposal of the government. Some will begin moving assets and themselves out of the reach of the Administration. And some will not take kindly to being threatened and react accordingly. Personally, I think Strumpf and most of the bankers will fall into the first group.
5.) Simultaneously with #3, things will be heating up elsewhere with political violence directed by #O/U/A. There may well be physical resistance to physical attacks. Once again, law enforcement in areas controlled by the Democrats will protect #O/U/A rioters.
6.) This will continue into the fall, with more and more of a breakdown of the rule of law if you are not favored by the regime. Wild cards added to the mix can include a foreign policy crisis/military defeat, economic collapse in Europe slopping over to us, and the possibility of a Middle East war during the election campaign; and possible restrictions on that campaign or its cancellation.

The lack of consequence attending to the escalating violence and threats has an old familiar ring to it. To whit:

On August 9, 1932, the government decreed the death penalty for those convicted of ‘political’ murder. The next night a band of Nazis invaded the home of a Communist worker in the Silesian village of Potempa and stomped him to death, kicking his larynx to pieces. When the killer s were arrested, tried, and sentenced in accordance with the new law, Hitler responded with threats and demonstrations. On Sept. 2, the government gave its answer: the death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. The killers were freed by Hitler next year. The civilized men in the country did not know what to do. In the words of one historian, the moderates voiced desperate “appeals to reason… [But] their techniques were distinctly out of tune with the wild emotionalism that seemed to have gripped a large part of the nation” The civility cherished by the civilized men had finally been defeated by their ideas, although they did not know that this was the cause.

After years of preaching contradictions and of evading principles with an anti-ideological shrug, these men were astonished to see the nation conclude that man cannot live by principles, that reason is no guide to action, and that anything goes. After years of institutionalizing interest-group warfare, which they had justified as sacrifice or collective service, these men were astonished to see hostile gangs take to the streets and demand one another’s sacrifice. After years of undercutting the mind by preaching the primacy of gentle feeling (whether ‘progressive’, religious, or skeptical), these men were astonished to find that they had nothing more to say, and that there was no one left to listen. The moderates were helpless. The authorities were helpless. The killers were taking over.

On January 30, 1933, after due attention to every requirement of German law and of the Weimar Constitution, Nazi rule was made official… It took six months for the Chancellor to transform the country into a totalitarian state.”

Leonard Peikoff – The Ominous Parallels

Once the violence spirals out of control, this regime will do its very best to disarm and silence ordinary Americans. That won’t go according to plan, however.

…that one of the disadvantages of being a political reporter for the Comical is that occasionally you are obliged to act like one — so they were down in Burlingame yesterday, covering the GOP state convention and Newt.

I love these OWS folks-they think if you borrow money, even to buy a home, from your brother, friend or banker that you can just break the agreement you made when you took out the loan. If I loaned my hard earned money to someone I would expect to be repaid

The key phrase in your comment is “my hard earned money.” In the Occupy view of things, the banks’ money is not “hard earned money,” and thus its current owners have no moral claim to it.

The bailout was supposed to be a redistributionist scheme. The plan was this:

1. Bully banks into making unsupportable loans to poor people, against the banks’ wishes.
2. When the banks then predictably go under, take a trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money and give it to the banks, to bail them out.
3. The banks were supposed to then just eat the bad loans, and instead forgive all unpaid debts from poor people; the money was to pay the banks back for doing this.
4. The end result was to then be a trillion-dollar “redistribution” of money from wealthy employed people to poor people, according to the Socialist blueprint.

Tha banks were just a mechanism in this theft process.

What happened is the banks didn’t follow through on their side of the “bargain”; instead, the banks kept the money, used it to get out of insolvency, and refused to cancel all bad outstanding debts.

That‘s what Occupy is protesting here: the banks’s failure to honor the grand redistributionist scheme.

Back when Bawney was hyperventilating over “evil” banks, the banks took notice. Back when the republicans were writing letters to stop this Fannie/Freddie fiasco, the banks noticed. When the banks protested and told the government that making loans like this is bad business and bad policy, the democrat government ignored them.

So there you have the setup for why they kept the money. “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” and they weren’t about to let it happen again because they sniffed the air and smelled a rat.

It’s therefore no big surprise that they kept the money and told Bawney and Dodd and Kennedy to go pound sand. The fact that it’s taxpayer money kind of irks me but really, the Obama-bots like to play fast and loose with it so…banks kept it and aren’t loaning it out. They are returning the middle-finger gesture they got from Hambone tenfold.

Alinsky died of a sudden, massive heart attack in 1972, on a street corner in Carmel, California, at the age of 63. Two months previously, he discussed life after death in his interview with Playboy:

ALINSKY: … if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.
PLAYBOY: Why?
ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I’ve been with the have-nots. Over here, if you’re a have-not, you’re short of dough. If you’re a have-not in hell, you’re short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I’ll start organizing the have-nots over there.
PLAYBOY: Why them?
ALINSKY: They’re my kind of people.

Except that there is no concept of hell within the bible. What we have a Greek tranlation of the Hebrew word for “kingdom of the Grave”, that is Sheol. if there is no resurrection then you simply cease to exist.

Even the judgement of the unjust simply means that you are wiped from existence. In other words you are garbage that has to be gotten rid of, burned up.

The problem was that the Greeks believed in an after life, thus Hades. Translating Sheol into Hades then allowed false teaching (paganism) to be pushed.

I LOVE that idea! I think it’s about time us REAL regular folks start telling these OWS puppets to get out of our cities and towns! The local authorities in most places are afraid to take action because it just turns them into martyrs. What if we all go out to the OWS sites and start telling the TRUTH! Regardless of how the media reacts, we win! If they’re there covering OWS, they won’t be able to avoid us. If they shut their cameras down so as not to give us coverage, then OWS doesn’t get coverage either!
We need to take our country back before there’s nothing left to take!

It’s been said that the occupiers refuse to meet at Denny’s because the connect the dots place-mat games are too hard. Denny’s offered to substitute it with the “find your way out” maze and they accused Denny’s of being racists.

Considering that the TBTF Wall Street banks received over $1.6 TRILLION dollars in direct and indirect bailouts and have been paying record bonuses to the same executives whose broken risk management should have resulted in their dismissal and the liquidation of their companies, can you really be suprised at whats happening?

Moral hazard – what’s good for the goose becomes good for the gander, especially fo you have a president using class warfare to stoke the flames of resentment to win re-election.

Oh and if you think things are bad now just wait until the TBTF’s need to be bailed out again when the Eurozone finally craps out. Bring popcorn for that one.

obozo’s private army!
If we don’t get rid of him, heaven help us. For all of you who won’t vote if your man doesn’t get in you deserve to live with the results, but I don’t and neither do my children or family, nor most of the good people in this country!
Our country won’t survive, our churches won’t survive and neither will our constitution.
Don’t tell me that it doesn’t matter – it does!

See David Horowitz on the “Occupy” movement. The members are would-be communist tyrants, and, like all tyrants, they claim to represent the “masses,” 99%, for which they have no evidence. No one forces them to use banks.

Most of the people in those photos “do” protesting as a hobby. They don’t realize it’s a hobby. They think they’re changing the world, and they’re awfully smug about it. But, really, it’s just a hobby, and not a very productive one at that. They should take up scrapbooking, or knitting. At least they’d have something to show besides just a photographic record of how stupid they’ll look to future generations.

I miss the days when Halliburton was the Left’s villain du jore. Do progressives regularly hold some sort of bizarro beauty contest to decide who this year’s “Most Evil White Guy” is going to be? Is there a swimsuit competition? Did the Koch Brothers win last year with their spirited fraternal version of “Duelling Banjos?” Will the next competition be broadcast on MSNBC?

All of this seems wacky but within a few weeks the OWS’eres will start coming out in force at Republican functions to “protest the system.” They are working their way up to some sort of lunatic explosion at the GOP national convention in Tampa. when it comes to the Democrats you will be able to hear the crickets chirping.

It gets a little annoying when people in our situation are called “losers.” My Husband and I lived in our house for 13 years, when he lost his job. We called Wells Fargo, and asked them to give us 2 more days to pay our loan. Not only was the girl who answered the phone snotty to me, she said I had to pay the money “that day!!.” I’ll never forget that phone call. Needless to say, we lost the house that we sunk over 10 grand into, at least, over the years. We never saw a job loss coming, and were living in various campgrounds. I’d like to see Mr. Stumpf living in Alcatraz, instead of being able to see it from his apartment window. No bank is worthy of a bailout!! I don’t go around with the OWS, nor do I condone what they’re doing, but I have to chuckle at this one incident!! Please have a little compassion with your remarks, because there are exceptions to every rule.

You lived in and made mortgage payments on a house for 13 years, and in all that time you “sunk 10 grand into it”?????

Do the math: $10,000 in 13 years is $769/year, which works out to a $64 per month mortgage payment. R-i-i-i-i-i-ight.

And what if you had gotten those extra two days? You’d still be living in the home, but gol’ durn it, you came into a big pile of money on the third day, but it was just too late!

Even so, despite having enough money after the third day, you instead had to go live in “campgrounds.”

(Also, your IP address shows that you live in a very expensive zip code.)

You should have put a little more thought into the numbers before testing out this idea.

All in all, I assess that this is a moby comment. And it’s part of a trend I’ve noticed on other Web sites recently; paid minions of Media Matters/whoever swarming conservative blogs to try to skew the conversation to be sympathetic to OWS with a barrage of not-very-believably moby comments.

Zombie, I think the “we sunk ten grand into our house” was supposed to show the vast amount (hah!) of money supposedly spent on upgrading/improvements. Of course, “ten grand” is basically enough to put cork flooring in the closets these days—it wouldn’t even re-do a decent-sized kitchen in Basic Ikea.

To talk like ten thousand dollars is a lot of money to put into a house over 13 years—that’s $1,000 per year after you finally get the Hummel figurines unpacked three years in—is ridiculous. You can spend that much painting in a couple of rooms and refinishing or replacing those rooms’ hardwood floors. Or building a deck. Or doing a little tuckpointing. Or any number of other things.

And to suggest that someone lost their house on the basis of some snippy person on the phone is absurd. There are papers involved in foreclosure, and no court is going to lightly toss out 13 years of equity.

It doesn’t pass the smell test for another reason – banks can’t, by law, start foreclosure proceedings until you’re several months behind, and (depending on the particular state law) have to give you other opportunities for redemption after that. And that’s before the new federal laws allowing even more redemption opportunities.

Nobody gets foreclosed for being late on a payment. Depending on the state, it’s six months or more. A lot of banks are so backlogged that they aren’t processing the paperwork in a timely fashion.

Okay, let me get this straight. The protestors are mad because they were stupid and bought homes they couldn’t afford? Now it’s this guys fault for working for a living and buying a home he can afford? So, they have no responsibility in their own foreclosure? I can tell you, I bought a home when the housing market was good. The sales people at the builders office tried to get me to upgrade every single thing in that house. They would say “But you’re approved for up to……”. I got the house I wanted at a price I could afford. I ended up selling my house for a nice profit, even though the market was bad at the time. Grow up people. Take responsibility for the mistakes you’ve made.

The Blaze reported that the left is planning a “99% Spring” (as in Arab Spring) with training to happen the week before Earth Day (early April).

At some point the Tea Party and other groups will have their own rallies. People are going to react and the leftwing freaks will always overplay their hand. But so far the left has only been willing to protest within cities controlled by the left. So for all of the “noise”, they are not taking the chance of really becoming martyrs.

Zombie – In the Occupy view of things, the banks’ money is not “hard earned money,” and thus its current owners have no moral claim to it.

Zombie, Wells Fargo and the rest of the TBTF banks GOT BAILED OUT. They DON’T have any moral claim to it, that MONEY was STOLEN from the American people by CONGRESS and the Bush/Obama administrations and given to cronies on Wall Street in exchange for campaign contributions.

Occupy is RIGHT, but their targets are not. Congress and the Obama administration should be the targets.

I think this OWS theater is appropriate. The target is chosen for being prominent, not for being ideal. Wells Fargo would be about half-way down the list of who OUGHT to be targeted for wasting taxpayer money, the big wall street banks, Fannie and Freddie, are way ahead. But BofA and Wells are the face of the financial market to most borrowers.

There are endless stories of botched and rude service, even in the best of times. There are endless stories of botched foreclosure processes, remember the guys in Florida who got a reverse-judgement and implemented a seizure against the local BofA branch for compensation? They are easy targets, and not entirely unjustified. It is NO fun when you are the victim of some minimum-wage temp working unsupervised for a big bank, causing you tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees, not to mention aggravation, no matter how right you are.

As for the poster above who put $10,000 into a home, well, in most parts of “flyover country” a decent home may be a $100,000 investment, and doing improvements on a US average household income of $40,000/year may be just about $10,000 over some years. But I can easily see how these numbers would seem small to the big city slickers running the banks and get you even less consideration than bigger deals. That’s the problem with this whole system, that it runs roughshod over the least of us.